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“I don’t have a man, Johnny,” Aria said to him, to which he howled.
“If that Cole kid doesn’t lock you down, he’ll regret it for the rest of his days,” Johnny said.
Aria rolled her eyes privately and turned back toward the bar, shame stewing in her gut. In truth, how Cole looked at her made her feel like the only woman in the world, as though the world had been created so that she and Cole could fall in love. But they’d hardly touched one another since her arrival in October. Sometimes, when they hugged, Aria felt as though her body was on fire.
Cole entered the bar around six-thirty, all smiles and filled with stories. He sat at the bar as Aria filled his pint glass and told her about his adventures that morning, the wild chaos of the seas, and how he wasn’t sure why he’d ever tried his luck in the Caribbean when it was so obvious to him now that the Atlantic was his only home, just as it had been for his father, who’d passed away.
As Cole spoke, another couple of patrons sidled up at the bar next to him and ordered beers, then asked Cole a few questions about his day.
“Where are you from?” Cole asked one of the sailors, his pint lifted.
“Just sailed up from Savannah,” one of them explained with a southern drawl.
“You’re kidding!” Aria smiled excitedly as Cole and the two other sailors gaped at her.
“Have you been to Savannah?” Cole asked her.
“Um.” Aria’s head swam about what she wanted to share and how she wanted to share it. “I lived there for a few years.”
“No way,” one of the sailors said. “What part?”
“I was going to the Savannah College of Art and Design,” Aria explained, flipping her hair nervously.
Cole’s eyes flickered with intrigue. “You never told me that.”
“A woman doesn’t have to share everything about herself,” one of the Savannah sailors told Cole with a laugh. “Tell us, honey. What was your specialty? You look like a painter to me.”
“Or a sculptor,” the other said.
Aria rolled her eyes at their fake flirtation. “I was studying to become an architect.”
Cole’s lips parted with genuine shock. “An architect?”
“That’s a crazy impressive field,” one of the sailors said.
“Did you drop out?” the other asked.
“Just last semester,” Aria said. “I’m really close to graduating, but I don’t know if I’ll go through with it. I found this new career, you know. Tending bar.”
Cole continued to look at her as though he’d never seen her before. Avoiding his eyes, she refilled their pint glasses and chatted to the guys about Savannah, about what she missed in that beautiful city.
“To be honest with you, I needed a break,” she explained. “My life felt like it had been flipped upside down.”
“That isn’t Savannah’s fault,” one of the guys said.
“I know. It’s a me-problem,” Arai affirmed.
He didn’t always, but on this night, Cole stayed till close and helped Aria clean up, wiping tables and even mopping the floor. Afterward, he palmed the back of his neck and said, “Are you hungry?” And Aria’s heart flipped over at his sincerity, his desire to spend just a few more minutes together.
They decided to grab a couple of pizzas and meet back at her place, where they could watch some trash television and chat without being overheard by anyone they hardly knew. They ordered at the cheap place that didn’t charge for extra cheese, then drove through the black and cold night to Aria’s shoddy apartment, where they dug into the pizzas and sat at the edge of her bed. Cole’s lips glistened with the grease from the pizza, and Aria stirred with longing. She’d never in her life been more eager to kiss someone, and it seemed to her that as time passed on their friendship, her window of opportunity was narrowing.
This deep into friendship, they could only ever be friends. That was the science of it all.
“I can’t believe you never told me you were studying to become an architect,” Cole said, his eyes like blue daggers.
Aria set down her pizza and cleaned her hands with a napkin. “It’s not really a big deal.”
“It is,” Cole insisted.
